Smear. Re-Smear. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. (My Comment at a Liberal Blog)
posted at 12:07 pm on October 16, 2009 by The Other McCain
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There are times when correction is needed:
Your citation repeats a common falsehood fostered by [Michelangelo] Signorile’s erroneous 2002 column. For the record (a) I never contributed to the site “Reclaiming the South,” which was operated by a white separatist named Dennis Wheeler with whom I quite strongly disagreed, and (b) I have neither any personal nor political interest in the marital preferences of others and have many friends of all races, some of whom are of mixed ancestry and some of whom are in mixed marriages. These are facts, to which there are witnesses.
Having long ago discovered that silence is often the best response to smears, it is nonetheless annoying to see people who have never met me claim to know my opinions on subjects about which they have never bothered to ask me themselves — although my e-mail address is public knowledge and my personal phone number is known to hundreds of journalists in Washington.
To quote the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts, and I am damned tired of people stating as a fact that my opinion is such-and-such, based on secondary sources of dubious veracity and questionable motives.
I certainly know my own opinions, and can tell you that you are quite mistaken as to particular facts. Stop your lazy habit of repeating the mistakes of others, or it shall bring you grief some day.
Of course, I won’t bother to link the blog that required that comment, but I quote it here just in case they delete it. (Also, I’ve also fixed a couple of minor typos, as the other blog’s comment field had no preview function.)
If I responded every time some arrogant ignoramus recycled these smears, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else. And I get tired of repeating myself, which is why I hate having to waste time arguing with liberals and other fools.
We may give liberals credit for their good intentions — how else shall they pave the road to hell? — but we can never credit liberals with good sense.
If they had any sense, they wouldn’t be liberals, would they?
– Robert Stacy McCain, June 15, 2009
Learn it. Live it. Love it.
Blowback
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Comments
I’d type a comment of support, but then a certain blogger might tag me as a white supremecist by extension. It seems God knew what he was doing when he blessed you with an abudance of patience and very thick skin.
BadgerHawk on October 16, 2009 at 12:26 PM
I’m terribly impatient by nature, and also sinfully proud. The thick skin is a product of repeated chastisements for which I struggle to be appropriately grateful.
Thank you!
The Other McCain on October 16, 2009 at 12:56 PM
I owe you an apology, RS, because I was too willing to believe Charles Johnson’s weak case that you’re an actual white supremacist. In the past, however, I believe you’ve written some things under the pseudonym “Burke C. Dabney” that are altogether too sympathetic to the white supremacists at websites like American Renaissance. In the big scheme of things, you’re a great writer who holds (or held) what I consider to be some dumb views on mixed marriages. Which is a long-winded way of saying, I’m sorry, but not all that sorry. You left yourself open to this stuff. I hope you consider revisiting your comments at Free Republic and American Renaissance, or at least give a full-throated denial that those comments are genuinely yours.
noted for amusement: the number two result for a Bing search of “Burke C. Dabney” quotes a comment I left in the Greenroom some time ago. The number 3 result is a blog apparently mocking this humble commenter’s same overwritten and rambling comment.
RightOFLeft on October 16, 2009 at 1:36 PM
I stopped trying to have sane discourse with (most) liberals long ago. One cannot deal reasonably and rationally with unreasonable, irrational people, its an exercise in futility.
beachgirlusa on October 16, 2009 at 2:12 PM
I also heard you were connected to Kevin Bacon. Please explain yourself.
In all seriousness, I am with RightOfLeft. The comment(s) about mixed marriages upset me.
Free Constitution on October 16, 2009 at 2:43 PM
No apology necessary. I had long telephone conversations with others (unnamed) who made the same mistake.
BTW, in 20+ years of journalism, I long ago learned one thing about this sort of situation: When you are required to print a correction (as every newspaper must from time to time) it is important not to repeat the misinformation in the process.
You saw yesterday how Rush Limbaugh became angry when, in the process of retracting the fake quotes, some media outlets actually repeated the bogus material. It was necessary that I should mention Signorile, but he need never be mentioned again. (I cited one specific mistake Signorile made; there were others, but I know best how to play the cards dealt.)
And please allow me to suggest that, henceforth, the first rule of Charles Johnson is: Nobody talks about Charles Johnson.
The Other McCain on October 16, 2009 at 3:32 PM
Of course they did. That’s why the Left has been recycling that stuff for so many years. Give liberals credit for a tacit acknowledgement that conservatives aren’t bigots. They seek some way to suggest that a particularly effective conservative (e.g., Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh) is secretly a bigot, and then: Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Too many people who call themselves “conservatives” make the mistake of supposing they can trust what liberals tell them. But you can’t spell “liberal” without L-I-E, so you have to learn to anticipate their deceitful tactics.
The object of the Ransom Note Method smear is to force the accused conservative to Deny, Denounce and Repudiate, to engage in a futile attempt to prove a negative, i.e., that they are not a bigot. Meanwhile, because the Left always uses the Links-and-Ties Method of guilt by association, other conservatives either stay silent or else join in denouncing the accused. The accused is thus disastrously alone — not even his closest colleagues will speak up in his favor, lest they be smeared for defending him. And so, one by one, conservatives allow their ranks to be steadily depleted by these predictable tactics.
Trent Lott and George Allen were both destroyed by that method during the years when, under orders from my employer, I was not permitted to address the accusations against me.
So I watched. And I studied. And I learned. Only with courage and faith can anyone ever survive such attacks.
Therefore, I prayed until I had tears in my eyes that when God finally granted me the opportunity to respond, I would be ready to stand with dignity and without fear.
My religion forbids me to hate. And I do not hate anyone, not even C—— J——.
The Other McCain on October 16, 2009 at 3:55 PM
I feel pity about the malady that has overtaken that person. It’s some kind of madness. But it’s worse decent people bear the brunt of it.
SarahW on October 16, 2009 at 6:24 PM
If I may inject a little humor Mr. McCain -
“if people are talking about you – you aren’t doing anything”
Negative or positive, you still Win.
We read you and know you – keep your chin up. Don’t let the bast*ards get you down. You got em running and right where ya want em.
seesalrun on October 16, 2009 at 9:18 PM
“if people are NOT talking about you – you aren’t doing anything”
jeese I need to preview
seesalrun on October 16, 2009 at 9:20 PM
sharmuta and cj sure have a weird obsession with what is going on over here.
cj is flat out calling you a white supremist.
ArmyAunt on October 16, 2009 at 10:21 PM
Why should I feel sorry for a neo-confederate? If only the South had won! Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
You claim not to be a white supremacist, fine, yet it is time to sever your ties from “Southern Pride.” Only then can I start to take you seriously.
Cheers,
Yankee
DanStark on October 17, 2009 at 12:18 AM
We southerners have no reason to be proud?
ddrintn on October 17, 2009 at 12:35 AM
Proud of your southern state, sure. Proud of region, sure. Proud in stating you wish the Confederacy won, no.
DanStark on October 17, 2009 at 12:39 AM
The problem is that I do wish the Confederacy had won. The start down our road to slavery on a national scale began with what Lincoln did to Federalism.
Within a generation, slavery would have been history, because the slave economic system can’t compete with capitalism. The Soviet Union proved that for all time.
And I don’t care if a damyankee like DanStark agrees with me. The Copperheads have always been slavery’s best friends, from the plantation to the collective to the madrassa.
SDN on October 17, 2009 at 9:24 AM
The Confederacy was no oasis. Not only was it an oppressive slave state…
The North won, get over it.
DanStark on October 17, 2009 at 1:10 PM
You’re from Minnesota, which is represented in the U.S. Senate by Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken.
I’m a native of Georgia, represented in the U.S. Senate by Republicans Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss. And the two most recent Democratic senators from Georgia? Sam Nunn and Zell Miller, both of whom were arguably more conservative than Norm Coleman (an open-borders squish who voted for John McCain’s amnesty bill).
So, yeah, we’re over it.
The Other McCain on October 18, 2009 at 2:30 AM
but… you did write that, along with dozens of other similar things.
here you seem to be suggesting that you didn’t write it or any of your “burke c. dabney” pieces (one of which you wrote for the white nationalist magazine, american renaissance.)
you don’t say you didn’t write it, of course, because that would be a stinking lie. you just suggest it. your evasive method of denial fails to impress.
you hit signorile for getting the exact forum in which your comments appeared wrong and attempt to steal to home on that basis, but the fact remains that the quote was accurately transcribed and attributed to you.
now, unless you lied to alan colmbs when you admitted that you are burke c. dabney, we can look at a lot of the other things you’ve said (link).
you’ve got this down to a form now, it appears.
a. liberals lie
b. i write professionally, so i won’t disconfirm these smears unless someone pays me to.
c. i didn’t disconfirm them when the washtimes was paying me because they forbid me.
d. to respond to the allegations would grant my accusers a power which i don’t care to grant them.
this churlish tap dance around the issue does communicate your contempt for your accusers even as it communicates your unwillingness to disavow your burke c. dabney writings.
perhaps you think there’s some distinction between “white nationalism” and “racism” that is worth considering. maybe you recognize that nobody agrees and that reforming white supremacist apologia is a project best left shelved for the time being.
but in the meantime, spare us the “liberals lie” lesson. we’re all familiar with progressives’ shameful habit of unjustifiably and arbitrarily accusing their opponents of racism. you’re not an example of this.
eh on October 28, 2009 at 3:00 PM